The External Advisory Committee (EAC) of the Oregon Healthy WorkForce Center met last Thursday to learn about the research, education and outreach in the Center’s first year. Pictured and attending are EAC members (from right) Joe Hurrell (formerly of NIOSH, now Editor of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology), Leda Garside (Tuality Heathcare ¡Salud! Services), Chuck Easterly (SAIF), John Mohlis (Oregon Building Trades), Noah Sexius (University of Washington) and Mark Cullen (Stanford University).

The EAC concluded that the Center’s strengths were in it’s scope and the diversity of the hard-to-reach populations (private and public construction workers, home care workers, corrections officers, and young workers) they are tackling with safety, health and wellness interventions. EAC members counseled the Center to grow in the area of sleep and health to leverage the new CROET Director’s expertise, consider a larger number of pilot projects focused on translations to take advantage of its many Oregon partners next year, publish a summary of the variations in common measures collected across these diverse projects which would be a unique contribution to the research literature, and to ensure that we are measuring social support in our populations because the Center interventions depend on team processes and social support in the workforce.

The Oregon Healthy WorkForce Center met today to consider these recommendations and plan out the next year of work. Requests from the Oregon Healthy WorkForce Center’s Partner’s Luncheon (reported here two weeks ago) led to a decision to speed Center efforts to develop a website that describes good (best) practices to improve safety, health and wellness (together and separately) in the workplace, and to expand its partner collaborations in the area of nail salon workforce health, safety and wellness. More requests and recommendations are under consideration by the Center.

About the Author

W. Kent Anger, PhD, is a Senior Scientist and Associate Director for Applied Research at OHSU's Center for Research on Occupational and Environmental Toxicology. Kent is also the Director of the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center, a NIOSH Center of Excellence in TWH.